Millennium Stadium

In a word, brilliant. The stadium is a spectator’s delight, being a magnificent new construction right in the heart of Cardiff.

The River Taff runs to the West of the ground, and Cardiff Castle is to the North. The location alone sets the Millennium apart from the great majority of rugby grounds. For those visiting Cardiff by train, the stadium is readily visible from Cardiff Central station. Your walk to the ground could be less than five minutes (it will be longer if you have to get to an entrance at the far end of the stadium). If the location carries any downside, it is for the motorist: parking is available in Sophia Gardens, just across the river, but it will take time to extricate yourself after the match. (Try a drink in Y Mochyn Du, on the far side of the car park, while you wait for the traffic to clear). There are park and ride alternatives from the outskirts.

Assuming you’re visiting Cardiff for the day, the best way to find food and drink is to wander the narrow side-streets and arcades of the city centre and simply pick out whichever of the many pubs and restaurants takes your fancy. Crowding can be an issue in the roads immediately surrounding the stadium, where some of the pubs put people on the doors to control numbers, but ten minutes walk across the central shopping streets should enable you to find somewhere more spacious. Brains, a quality real ale, is the local brew (the brewer is also the sponsor of the national team): S.A., popularly known as Skull Attack, is its signature pint. Some of the restaurants put on a special match-day set menu at inflated prices: watch out for this, if you’re tempted to sit down to eat.

The real joy of the location is that the match-day atmosphere infuses the whole of the city centre, enhancing the nature of the occasion. Drinking outside in the sun, on a Spring day before a Six Nations fixture, watching all the supporters mingling with the city centre shoppers, and seeing the stadium pylons towering over the City buildings is the Cardiff experience par excellence. It’s a stark contrast to the anticlimatic stroll to the outskirts of Edinburgh, or the commuter train from Waterloo to Twickenham station and RFU HQ.

The stadium was newly built in the late 1990s, on the site of the old National Stadium (better known as Cardiff Arms Park). Forming a link to the past, a section of the old stadium’s North Stand has been built into the new stadium: it is evident as a block of lower seating behind the goal at the North end (to the left, for the TV viewer). The pitch was rotated 90° as part of the redevelopment.

Inside, it’s much the same as any modern sports ground: plastic beer, queues for the toilets at half time, souvenir and replica gear shops, very well designed for access and sight lines, good PA, lots of concrete. If you’re seated in the top tiers, prepare for a little shiver of vertigo as you first ascend to your seat: it’s really quite steep, but that helps you feel that your nose is almost above the touchline. I’ve had seats at each end of the ground (on the goal-line) which still give a very good view to the far end of the pitch. Two big screens, high above each end, give a good look at replays. The seating areas are all covered, and there is always the option to close the roof on a rainy day, so getting wet should not be a problem. Whether the roof is on or off, the acoustics are excellent, and the pre-match singing and anthems are a vital, intense part of the Cardiff match-day experience.

One downside of the steep-sided construction is that the pitch gets relatively little direct sunlight. Attempts to bring in fresh turf for each game have seen the surface cut up alarmingly on occasion, but this is not a problem unique to Cardiff, and seems an unavoidable consequence of modern stadium design.

After the match, there’s really no reason to hang around in the ground. Crowds disperse quickly, and it can get quite damp and chilly in amongst all that concrete. Better to head for the bright lights of Cardiff once again.

Keep an eye on your train timetables, though. Late kick-offs for television do not necessarily mean late trains, which has in the past led to problems for visitors travelling back to London.

To make a weekend of it, Cardiff has all the major brand-name hotels plus plenty of B&Bs, but consider also travelling on to the West of the city, and staying out at commuter-train radius, for example in Bridgend or Penarth, to avoid crowded hotels and rip-off rates. If you want to pay top dollar, look at the Celtic Manor near Newport, the resort hotel which is to be home of the 2010 Ryder Cup.

Tickets are, of course, hard to come by for the big matches, but only two years ago Wales were failing to sell out fixtures like Scotland and Ireland. Italy, as a home game in the 2006 Six Nations, could still fall into this category. For Autumn Internationals against the minor nations, ticket prices are reduced to as little as £ 10 (£ 5 for children), with a view to filling the stadium.

It’s arguably the finest sports stadium in the UK, and well worth a visit if you get the opportunity.